I’m not sure if the other cast members felt like this but I’m daring to assume they didn’t if only because I often felt I was the only one. One of the few left out of dramatic squabbles about roommates and luggage hauling and choreography mistakes. I was, as is usually the case, that really annoying girl.

The girl who was continually excited, every single morning, to wake up. To find out where we were going, what we were going to see, what it was going to be like. I felt like the two and a half months I spent touring around the country in a children’s theatre van was the first time in my life where I was an expert at caring for myself. I simply woke up every day and chose Joy.

And for some reason lately, probably the change in the weather, I can’t help the memories that often come barreling back to me. They are sort of surprising, considering it was three years ago. Perhaps it’s because those places were so sturdily etched in my brain—the various Main Streets, those moments of laughter ’til I cried, the change of leaves from town to town.

There was that really shady motel in Augusta, Georgia that had a pool. It was so damn hot out, even in late September, that I decided to jump in, just for a minute, disgusting chlorinated awfulness be damned. I dragged Jon with me to keep away the creepy stares of the older men that sat poolside playing cards. It worked. Sort of.

There was the time we drove to Memphis and actually had a few hours to stop and walk around downtown. I tried Fried Green Tomatoes for the first time and constantly burst into song to the chagrin of pretty much everyone. TAKE THIS PICTURE, OKAY? BECAUSE I’M “WALKING IN MEMPHIS”. GET IT? DO YOU? MARGOT? WHY ARE YOU WALKING AWAY?

D. had recently lost 135 pounds on a popular weight-loss regimen and once we hit the road, he was pretty much paranoid about eating anything that wasn’t on the Jenny Craig plan. When we showed up in Charleston, South Carolina and I dragged him into a candy store, he took about ten hours deciding on the perfect candy to waste some calories on. We walked through the streets together, marveling over everything, savoring the dark chocolate melting in our mouths.

We would pull into a town in the late afternoon if the drive was relatively short. I would drag my suitcase out of the van, drop it off in my room with Margot and quickly change into running gear. Out the door I would go, iPod buds in my ear, cruising into unknown neighborhoods, places I would most likely never see again.

I ran through the suburbs of Atlanta and Raleigh, past Halloween decorations and mothers driving home from work. I imagined who lived in what house, what they were like, what kind of lives they led. My sneakers got soaked on a run on Myrtle Beach in South Carolina which was, by the time we got to it, a deserted tourist town. There was nowhere I refused to run and nothing made me happier than collapsing on my hotel bed afterward as Margot declared, “YOU. ARE. INSANE.”

A bunch of us hiked a mountain (small hill?) in Asheville, North Carolina, right before the leaves exploded into color. We goofed around and made faces but mostly we just stood and stared. Stillness. Happiness. Pure.

Sometimes I feel like I made that trip so incredibly long ago. And sometimes I feel like it was yesterday. Was that really my life for a little while? Getting paid to drive around, perform for kids, take pictures, eat at new restaurants, run through new neighborhoods, laugh forever and ever? Was that the way it was?

Sometimes it takes me a second to remember. And then the pieces drift back.

That time Margot and I drove the van alone, singing harmony to every single song on the radio, all afternoon long, soaring along the highways of the South.

That time I forgot my wallet in the bathroom stall at a Wendy’s and had to drive four hours to get it back.

That time Melissa and I did a shot of whiskey at a bar in Nashville in the middle of the day. Just because.

That time, all that glorious time, that went by so fast, that I sometimes miss so much.